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You’ll Never Believe What I Found In My Garden

by Venomous Kate

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Fourteen months ago — on December 30, 2010 to be precise — I went to a decidedly boozy birthday celebration. So boozy, in fact, that long before the other celebrants were ready to call it a night, I asked the bartender to call a cab for me so I could go home. The next morning, I woke up with one of the worst hangovers I’ve ever had… in addition to a goose egg-sized bump on my forehead from when I’d had to bend over and squint so I could get my key into the lock on our front door, at which point I’d overbalanced, whacked my head on the front door, over-corrected from that, and landed smack on my backside, which is how I was still sprawled when my smirking husband finally took pity on me and let me into the house.

It was not my finest moment.

Anyway, after spending several hours trying not to throw up napping on the sofa, I remembered that I’d taken several photos with my iPhone 3GS and had promised to send them to the rest of the gang. One problem: my iPhone was missing.

Now, had I been a smart woman I would’ve had Find my iPhone installed, and tracking it down would’ve been easy as pie. Then again, had I been a smart woman I would have realized — as I since have, I assure you — that a woman of my age and responsibilities has NO business going out and drinking like that.

My first thought was that maybe it had fallen out of my purse when I’d ricocheted from knocking my forehead against the front door to plopping on my ample posterior. But, in all honesty, I was in no condition to step outside looking for my phone, so I asked my husband if he’d conduct the search for me. He huffed a bit, then stepped out front and stomped around. Not two minutes later, he was back inside grumbling about how cold it was and that, even assuming my phone had fallen outside, it would either have cracked as it hit the ground or would have died in the frigid overnight temperatures. In sum, he said, I was screwed.

“You weren’t out there for very long,” I said. “How could you have looked all over the front yard in such a short time?”

“It’s in a pink case, okay, against white snow. It wouldn’t be that hard to see, okay?” he replied.

“But what if fell into a drift? You wouldn’t see it then,” I said.

“I looked for it, okay? It is NOT there. No doubt, you left it at the bar or in the cab or someone stole it from your purse, but IT IS NOT OUTSIDE, all right?”

Have I mentioned that my husband gets very, very touchy when we have to spend money on anything, and doubly so when we have to spend money replacing something one of us has lost?

Yeah, so I spent the rest of the morning using our land line to call everyone in the group, each of whom was as hungover as I was, and none of whom had seen my phone. To a man (or woman), they all pointed out that the bar we’d been at was — how to put this — a nasty little dive filled with such unsavory characters that none of us felt safe going to the bathroom unless: (a) someone would come with us; and (b) someone else was actively guarding our drinks. In other words, someone might have nicked my iPhone out of my purse when I wasn’t looking.

Because I use my iPhone intensively, I had a lot of sensitive data stored on it. Waiting and hoping it would turn up just wasn’t an option, so we called AT&T that day to deactivate the thing. Wouldn’t you know, they had a special going if I wanted to upgrade to the iPhone 4? Yes, please, I told them, and two days later my pretty new gadget, and new case, arrived in the mail. After getting my data transferred to the new unit, I never gave my old iPhone another thought.

Until yesterday.

See, yesterday we had absolutely gorgeous weather. Since this winter has been so mild, and our local weather gurus all agree we’re unlikely to get any significant snow or even another hard freeze before things warm up for the Spring, I decided to do some gardening. I weeded, raked, and pruned stuff, then planted four dozen frilly pansies in the front garden to give the house some much-needed curb appeal. Then I reached behind the foundation plantings next to the front step so I could turn on the sprinkler and water my perky new plantings.

Lo and behold, there was my iPhone, half-buried in mud and looking so similar to my current iPhone (I do like those pink cases) that for a moment I thought I’d just dropped it. But no, my iPhone 4 was in my pocket. What I was looking at was the iPhone 3GS that I’d lost not this past December, but the one before that.

As in, fourteen months ago.

Fourteen months, during which I’ve severed contact with everyone who’d been at that party, for what I think should be an obvious reason. Fourteen freaking months, during which time the Venomous Hubby has reminded me, every single time I’ve left the house, to be careful that I don’t lose my iPhone. Fourteen months during which we’d had over 70 inches rain/snow including one all-out blizzard, during which we shivered through the third coldest winter on record, then sweated through weeks of temperatures above 90F. Fourteen long months during which bugs, spiders and that damned woodchuck have scampered around behind the foundation plants doing whatever it is yucky creatures do outside.

What does an iPhone look like after it’s been exposed to all of that? Like this:

Needless to say, I did a happy dance which involved waving my old iPhone in my husband’s face while telling him, in a singsong voice, “I found it! I found it! It’s not lost anymore, ‘cuz I found it!” which was my way of telling him to shut the hell up about the incident already, m’kay?

His response: “So, you found it, big deal. And now you’re the proud owner of an overpriced paper weight.”

There are few things that I enjoy more than being right, so I slipped the thing out of its case and gave it a good rubbing with a barely damp cloth. I was surprised how few scratches the screen had, and how easily it cleaned up. No doubt, the case had a lot to do with that.

But then came the big question: would it work? I really didn’t have high hopes, considering the kind of weather we’d had since I lost the dang thing, but then again, it had been sheltered by both the foundation shrubs and a foot or so of roof overhang. Even so, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I plugged it in and the thing powered on right away.

And, just in case there are doubters out there, here’s a snap of my new and old iPhones side-by-side:

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Well done, Apple. Well done, indeed! Not only did you help me shock my husband into speechlessness (yay!), but you’ve made an Apple convert out of him, too. Most importantly to me, now he’ll have his OWN iPhone to use when he wants to find tomorrow’s weather forecast, check the game scores, or maybe even call the florist and order a bouquet for his wife.

5 Comments
to “You’ll Never Believe What I Found In My Garden”

Yeah, I was truly stunned! I’ve read so many articles about iPhones being finicky, but I’d never had trouble with mine. But I was just certain weather like that — and all that time — would be too much for it.

Grace, the old pink case is still in pretty good shape so I don’t need to replace it. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve told VH. Heh.

Ben, I’d cracked the screen on that phone dropping it from the kitchen counter just a week or so before I lost it. Ordered a replacement screen and, using a YouTube video, managed to replace it. I was SO proud of myself… until I lost the thing. As for why it survived, I really think if it had been screen-side up — instead of case-side up — it would’ve been ruined.